<p>Did you read my preceding post? I take it you didn't.</p>
<p>I recently had a great conversation with Branford friend who worked at Yale Admissions after graduating, and he said that the 4/5 figure is a myth perpetuated since the late 80's. He also said, that those "I heard that Stanford beats Princeton 75% of the time" numbers, can't be accurate for two reasons. The first is that the pool is completely biased since they rely on voluntary student surveys to their admitted colleges (and to the colleges they reject). Secondly, and more importantly, to accurately calculate such a figure on cross admission numbers, BOTH schools in question would have report the detail on their admission losses in a single year, which has never happened, publicly at least. So you can either trust what people "heard" in Harvard and Yale newspaper/internet columns, or you can realize that all of it is heresay and biased at that. There are problems with revealed preference as well (Byerly will detail more), but at least its an open and non-biased statistical sample.</p>
<p>
[quote]
"Did you read my preceding post? I take it you didn't."
[/quote]
Byerly, your point about the limited data set of NBER is tenable. But my point about H>Y 58% of the time is in the NBER report as I cited. Did I do the math wrong? Check it out when you have a chance.</p>
<p>I am proud of what you call my "fantasy," and what I call a shrewd inference that reconciles the available information on the point. FACT: H's student body has far more kids from the vast center of America than does that of Yale or P. Fact: H has the brand name in interior. FACT: among my compadres in the PST and EST time zones, Yale has the hot hand. Logical inference that reconciles these contradictory obseravations: H's lead over Y and P is piled up in America's vast middle. "QED."</p>
<p>You are naive, "crimson buldog" if you think these schools don't know <em>exactly</em> what happens with each and every common admit. I know this is true in the case of both Harvard and Yale, and I'm fairly sure it is true of Stanford and Princeton as well. Harvard loses only about 20% of its admits, and it makes it its business to know where virtually every one of the 400 or so ends up. </p>
<p>This fall, Stanford (rather uniquely, given the "sensitive" nature of these closely-guarded numbers) published the precise breakdown of where its "losses" ended up.</p>
<p>Matriculants are quizzed closely as to where else they applied and were admitted, and this data is cross-checked extensively.</p>
<p>After all, this is perhaps THE most important "market research data" for the top elites to have: ie, how they fare against the top competitors, why they win in some cases and why they lose in other cases.</p>
<p>The Yale Dean of Admissions and Financial aid acknowledged to the Yale Herald in an article 3 years ago that "Harvard takes 83% of common admits."</p>
<p>This was no "myth from the 1980's" so don't give me that crap.</p>
<p>Jesus... even if you find that it grates against your religious principles to admit that common admits overwhelminglu choose Harvard over Yale .. just USE YOUR HEAD! When Harvard has upwards of an 80% yield and Yale has a 66% yield (and I assume you'll find it hard to conveniently dismiss THESE numbers as "myths"!!!!) then obviously Yale is losing more admits than Harvard is, and we can probably agree that the "losses" aren't flowing to Tufts or to Fairfield!</p>
<p>after lurking in this forum for awhile, it would seem that byerly has gone on a one man crusade to attempt to prove to the world that harvard is better than yale... isn't this what he has always accused yalies of doing in the first place?</p>
<p>I don't say its "better" or "worse" (except in football) but merely report that a majority of common admits - for reasons best known to themselves - choose Harvard over Yale.</p>
<p>This Princeton article "ranks" cross-admit yields as
1. Harvard
2. Yale
3. Princeton
4. Stanford/MIT
I don't think anyone will argue with that. What is important is this quote from the article:</p>
<p>"He cautioned that 'basically what that's showing is that Harvard's a popular college. It doesn't mean it's better, just that it's popular.' "</p>
<p>"Losing students to Harvard is nothing new, said Chris Avery, a professor at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government who researches the college admissions process.</p>
<pre><code>In a 2000 study of 3,000 highly-qualified students admitted to the nation's most selective colleges, Avery found that in head-to-head battles, schools almost invariably lost out to Harvard.
"We found [that] essentially Harvard was winning most of the competitions for students," Avery said in an interview.
He cautioned that "basically what that's showing is that Harvard's a popular college. It doesn't mean it's better, just that it's popular."
Avery's study did not ask students why they chose Harvard over other schools, a question Rapelye seeks to address in the coming year.
"I think it's a great question to ask and one that we should be asking," she said.
In order to seek answers to that question and others, the University has contracted the services of an outside research firm to "determine what parents and prospective students think about us," Rapelye said.
"What are the positive impressions that we can build on? What are the negative stereotypes that we need to address, and frankly, what are the myths we need to debunk?" Rapelye asked.
Colleges already have information on students' preferences through the College Board's "Admitted Students' Questionnaire," Avery said, but that does not mean the University's new research effort is not valuable.
"To some degree everybody already has that information, but Princeton seems to be trying to get more detailed information," Avery said. "Historically that's something schools have always done."
</code></pre>
<p>Byerly, I googled this for the heck of it. In 02 (I think) the Yale Herald said that Yales Dean of Admission said H won 75% of cross admits with Yale. I didn't find your 83% figure in my search, But you're closer than I was at 58.5% based on the NBER data. Frankly, 58% sounds too low, but 75% sounds too high. But until Yale says otherwise, it's the best available number.</p>
<p>I think that was a vague "three-quarters" acknowledgement wasn't it? Actually, it was 81% that year. In the 2001 article, in answer to a specific question, The Financial Aid guy (Routh) acknowledged an 83% margin. 2001 is not archived online anymore, but I'll see if I can come up with a quote for you. In 2003, the margin was even a bit higher, I believe..</p>
<p>byerly, it wasn't a "direct" quote but seemed firm.</p>
<p>If I were lucky enough to have the choice, I'd have to agonize. I'm not surprised that more people choose H, but I'm shocked that 75% or more do. H and Y are like Oxford vs. Cambridge -- I mean it's not like Y is not real real close in prestige. And H's rep for humane undergrad treatment is not at all cool. But maybe a lot of people think H is really a lot more prestigious. I dunno..</p>
<p>The answer, I guess, is that your impressions are not typical of those gained by most top students - ie, about what makes a college "cool". </p>
<p>I think the primary answer - as articulated by one analyst (Professor Frank of Yale?) - is that the best students want to go where their peers go in the greatest numbers. Beyond that, Cambridge/Boston is widely viewed as a superior college town. Although New Haven is not as grim as it used to be, reputations die hard.</p>
<p>EDIT: I think I found the archived Yale Herald article, and will post an exerpt. (I'd post it all - because it is interesting - but the moderators would probably chop it in half.)</p>
<p>The Yale Herald sat down with Donald Routh, Yale's director of financial aid, and four concerned students to discuss the successes and failures of the University's first year of reformed financial aid.
..........</p>
<p>(DR=Donald Routh)
........</p>
<p>SSL: Didn't Harvard used to have higher self-help?
DR: Yes, they were $1,000 higher than Yale and now they're $1,000 lower. They came from last place to first place [in the Ivy League] by changing the self-help adjustment policy.
ZK: You were saying that federal regulations bind how Yale uses outside scholarships?
DR: Right. The federal rule is that a student should not receive more financial aid than she has demonstrated that she needs--it's what we call "overaward."
You've got merit
YH: Do you think that this discourages students from seeking outside scholarships?
DR: I think the answer is no. More than half [of the scholarship] goes to reduce self-help anyway. Recognition of merit is why most students apply for it anyway. People always perceive it as Yale taking money away. Fact is, we budget every year with the expectation that our students will bring about $2 million in outside scholarships. If we didn't make awards until August, no one would have the perception that we are "taking away." Harvard's policy changes in this area won't have any effect on us because we don't do very well against Harvard anyway. Last year, Harvard got 83 percent of students that got into both Yale and Harvard.
ZK: Do you have a breakdown of what kinds of backgrounds those 83 percent come from?
DR: You mean, do we lose the poor students or the rich students?
ZK: Right. Because then you would know exactly how the new policies affect that.
DR: Well, we know we didn't lose any poor students to Princeton, even though they took the loan obligation out of the package for students under a $40,000 income. And actually, Harvard [got] 83 percent with students believing they were going to have $1,000 extra in self-help, because [Harvard] didn't make any changes until September of this year, and then they made it retroactive. That was the strangest decision that any of us had ever heard.
ZK: Perhaps a large part of the 83 percent were students from middle-income families.
DR: I don't think it has anything to do with financial aid.
EC: I think it does, slightly. My little brother was accepted to both Harvard and Yale last year, and financial aid did influence his decision to go to Harvard because Harvard offered him a better deal.
DR: Did he ask us to review his package?
EC: Oh, you reviewed it, but in the end, Harvard gave him a better package.
ZK: Is that particular to his case?
DR: It happens both ways. That's because the Justice Department won't let us compare notes anymore. For 30 years we exercised what we called "overlap." About 25 schools literally got together around a table and reviewed the need of candidates. All we know now is what the student tells us. We no longer know if we have the same information, because we don't have a chance to compare our analysis. The competition has taken away whatever spirit of cooperation we used to have.
The invisible hand
YH: So would you call this a bidding war?
DR: In overlap, a group of schools with a natural order of selection--nobody at Yale likes you to tell them that 83 percent choose Harvard, but it's a fact--were willing to say, "We'd like to take the financial component out of the student's decision on where she is going to go to college." That's a rather remarkable decision for a group of schools to make. But it doesn't work that way anymore. So there's competition of a sort.</p>
<p>The answer, I guess, is that your impressions are not typical of those gained by most top students - ie, about what makes a college "cool".</p>
<p>Well...I don't know what makes an impression "typical," but Newsweek did cite Yale as the Hottest Ivy for 2005. Not to worry, though: Harvard is really special too. They have the Hottest Library.</p>
<p>... plus the best football team, too, I suppose.</p>
<p>Oh, I totally grant that Harvard has a superior football team....</p>
<p>*Some people try to find things in this game that dont exist but football is only two thingsblocking and tackling.</p>
<p>--Vince Lombardi*</p>
<p>"When the Great Scorer comes to write against your name,
He writes not if you won or lost -
But how you played the game."</p>
<pre><code> - Grantland Rice
</code></pre>
<p>From another article in the Yale Herald 2002</p>
<p>According to Shaw, Yale's main competitors for students are Harvard, Princeton, and Stanford. "Currently Yale [goes] head to head with Stanford and Princeton while Harvard does a bit better against us [for common admits]," Shaw said.</p>
<p>To me that doesn't sound like he is referring to a 4:1 ratio - maybe you know the real numbers. And Byerly, how does a 13% difference in yield rates equal a 70% difference in cross admit rates. Where do the 20% of a harvard admissions go?</p>
<p>And I would appreciate you not be so condescending and insulting in your messages. It is the reason why no one likes you and why you dissuade so many good applicants from going to the best university in the world. When I attack a Harvard stat, I am not attacking you, so don't take it so personally. For god sakes, we are debating a yield rate, not "religious beliefs"- nothing so important for you to become irate and foul about. Maybe the best thing that ever happened to you was 50 years ago when you attended college there, but that would indicate a really pathetic hollow existence since. Then again you are a 65 year old Harvard cheerleader on a college admissions board, what's more pathetic than that? For some reason you think you are Harvard, but you aren't. So grow up you insecure old man or find some meaning in your life.</p>
<p>
[quote]
According to Shaw, Yale's main competitors for students are Harvard, Princeton, and Stanford. "Currently Yale [goes] head to head with Stanford and Princeton while Harvard does a bit better against us [for common admits]," Shaw said.</p>
<p>To me that doesn't sound like he is referring to a 4:1 ratio - maybe you know the real numbers. And Byerly, how does a 13% difference in yield rates equal a 70% difference in cross admit rates.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Good point. Recal also that until last year, Yale was on ED and Harvard was EA. That means Harvard statistics wre skewed totally in it's favor. Yale's EDs, the most comitted to Yale, withdrew their applications from H-- in other words they never got to be counted as cross admits that Yale won. By contrast Harvard EAs, with which it filled more than half its class in some years, were not required to withdraw, even though virtually all applied to H because it was their first choice. Moreover, even the NBER data, which is almost a dead heat with Yale, did not adjust for this. I must conclude therefore that Yale is now preferred over Harvard by the majority.</p>
<p>I don't know about that, I doubt Yale will ever beat Harvard in terms of preference, I don't think anywhere will. Harvard is Harvard afterall. That's why I went there for med school - not because it is the best med school (its really not), but because it is thought of as the best.</p>